HISD: 4 teachers accused of cheating will get year's severance

Teachers resign after accusations of test cheating

Updated 10:34 am, Sunday, August 10, 2014

Four teachers accused in an HISD cheating scandal agreed Thursday to resignation packages that included a year's salary, a deal described as a victory by an attorney for three of them.

A fifth Jefferson Elementary School teacher accused in the case had previously resigned to take another job and will not receive the severance payment, Houston Independent School District spokewsoman Sheleah Reed said.

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The school board approved his recommendation, prompting the teachers to appeal to the state commissioner of education. Some of those appeal hearings were scheduled to start this week, said Chris Tritico, an attorney for three of the teachers.

The school board signed off Thursday on packages that give four of the teachers a clean record and the maximum pay they could have received through successful hearings, Tritico said.

"It's a total victory for these teachers," he said. "It's a rare day that (HISD) does something like this."

The teachers' names were not released. Tritico said one accepted a position with a neighboring district earlier this summer and said he is confident the others will also find teaching jobs.

Andy Dewey, vice president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, called the district's evidence against the teachers sketchy and said he worries about the message the episode sends to other HISD educators.

The main reason the teachers were flagged was that 100 percent of the English-speaking third-graders at Jefferson passed state exams in reading and math in 2013, ranking the north Houston school as one of the highest-performing in the district.

"They did the things at Jefferson that year that teachers are expected to do - they tutored the kids, they worked their tails off," Dewey said. "This has a chilling effect to every other teacher who teaches at an inner-city school: Do well, but don't do too well."

Jefferson and Atherton elementary schools have been under suspicion since November, when the district reassigned 20 teachers to off-campus duties while a law firm it hired investigated possible cheating.

"Testing helps us measure the degree to which students are learning, and HISD will remain vigilant in its efforts to ensure that the integrity of the state's testing process is not compromised," Reed.